The new historic police drama from Shaw and Cineflix has a premiere date in Canada – finally. Look for it on 26 August 2012 on Showcase, only a week after it is on BBC America.

The series is created by Emmy® winner Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide: Life on the Streets, St. Elsewhere) and Academy Award® nominee Will Rokos (Monster’s Ball, Southland) and among the executive producers is Academy Award® winner Barry Levinson (Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man, You Don’t Know Jack). And yet when it came to finding a home for the show it ended up being on BBC America, the home of almost all imported British programmes, which seemed a bit strange since the central character is an Irish immigrant police officer.  Even more strange is that when it came to actually making the show no American studio or indie production company got in on it. The show is being made about an Irish cop in Manhattan for BBC America by Canadian companies Shaw Media and Cineflix in Toronto. Given the great and varied successes of the creative team behind the show one would think they would have had domestic interest re production but apparently not.

Why such interest in the show? This writer, well she loves the story and ambiance of Gangs Of New York, and guess when and where this show is set. Manhattan’s The Five Points in the 1860s. Sadly Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t in this show.

If you are wondering what ever became of The Five Points in the 150 years since Gangs Of New York and Copper you are not alone. There is not much mention of it these days in main-stream media. Or so you might think. The courthouse on whose steps many a scene from the Law & Order collection of shows were and still are filmed is at the centre of what once was The Five Points neighbourhood. Foley Square sits on the site of Collect Pond, which was one of the original fresh water sources for the city, but in 1811 was drained and filled-in because it had become severely polluted and implicated in typhus and cholera outbreaks. The exact location of the former “five points” intersection itself is a little bit east of Foley Square, on the other side of the New York City Supreme Court building, and also on what was once part of Collect Pond, and is currently the intersection of Worth (Anthony) and Baxter (Orange) Streets. Mosco (Cross) no longer extends to that intersection, and the section of Baxter south of it no longer exists. Little Water Street no longer exists.